This invention relates to improved aircraft safety equipment, for preventing damage to an aircraft upon sudden depressurization of one of several pressurized compartments while in flight.
A recent major aircraft crash in which many lives were lost was caused by accidental opening and loss in flight of a door to the cargo compartment of a wide-bodied jet aircraft. When this door opened, the sudden depressurization of the cargo compartment resulted in the development of such a high differential pressure between that compartment and a passenger compartment thereabove that the deck of the passenger compartment was deformed downwardly in a manner damaging control cables located beneath that deck. This caused complete loss of control of the aircraft, which then crashed. Similar difficulties might in some instances occur as a result of differential pressure induced deformation of a vertical bulkhead between two initially pressurized compartments if one of those compartments loses pressure in flight. For example, on a wide-bodied jet, depressurization of the cargo compartment on the lower level of the craft might cause bulging of the bulkhead between that compartment and a galley on the same level.